From Judex Okoro, Calabar
The Cross River All Progressives Congress (APC) Legacy Group has raised the alarm alleging plots by new defectors to hijack political appointments in the incoming administration at national and state levels.
The Legacy Group made up of founding members of APC who have been in the party since its inception, has been having a running battler with the new entrants into the party, especially those who defected with Governor Ben Ayade on Thursday, May 20, 2020.
And since the defection, there has been no love lost between the Legacy Group (old members) and the defectors (new APC members) as the former claimed they have been marginalised in the setting up of new party structures from wards to national levels and in appointments.
Lamenting over their plights in the last three years at a press briefing held in Calabar, the chairman of the APC Legacy Group in the state, Barr Eyo Nsa Ekpo, said in spite of the efforts made by the group to ensure the party wins at the polls, there are pockets of information that the group may be sidelined in Bola Tinubu and Prince Bassey Otu’s governments.
Ekpo decried the narratives being sold to the party by the new members that the APC Legacy Group is a divisive tendency of the party in Cross River state, saying such a statement is intended to further blackmail and marginalise them even when they stood firmly behind Bola Ahmed Tinubu and worked assiduously for the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President and Prince Bassey Otu as Governor without disdain.
He said: “We worked hard in the 2023 election and for the first time in history, the APC has a governor elected under the party in Cross River State. We insist that the members of the APC Legacy Group are entitled to the reward that will arise for the course of the 2023 election. We are not in a position to dictate what the governor-elect, Prince Bassey Otu, or Bola Ahmed Tinubu will offer to us but we are entitled because we have the capacity.”
“We, therefore, call on the leadership of the party to disregard all the rumours making the rounds about us because we are entitled and have the capacity. We also salute our national leadership, the state party chairman, Barr. Alphonsus Eba, and all members of the APC.
“We remain loyal to the party but won’t have our voices silenced. We do not hold grudges against those of them hankering after power but we want to let them know that we will not be buried,” he stated.
Also speaking, the Cross River State publicity secretary of APC Legacy Group, Iso Edim, said the group deserved a reward for there was a point where some of them were incarcerated from their communities just for supporting the APC, saying it would amount to injustice to attempt to sideline people who trekked several miles to attend legacy meetings.
“We are asking that the APC Legacy Group be carried along from the state to the local government level. With Eba, we are rest assured that we will be carried along”, Edim said.
Reacting, one of the commissioners in Governor Ben Ayade’s administration, who also defected on May 20, 2020, but does not want his name in print, said: “ This is the time to rebuild the party and carry everybody along now they have won at state and national levels.
According to him, “There is nothing anymore like old APC and new APC with the coming on board of the governor-elect, Bassey Otu, who is seen as a unifying force, admitting to an extent the Legacy Group (founding members) members have been marginalised in terms of appointment, but hopes it would be properly addressed in near future.”